


nemeton

by albion, orphan_account



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Monster Hunters, Knotting, M/M, Monsters, Werewolves, it's exactly what you think it is
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-31
Updated: 2019-10-31
Packaged: 2021-01-15 19:01:07
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,890
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21258095
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/albion/pseuds/albion, https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: Before, he never used to run this route alone. Doing this one alone was akin to a suicide mission, and everyone knew it.Now he’s the only one left, and he has no choice.





	nemeton

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Smalls2233](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Smalls2233/gifts).

> So... I've never written werewolves or this kind of prompt before, but this was very fun and challenging to write! I haven't written anything in a long time, and this was certainly a very fun way to get back into the swing of things!!
> 
> For Meg: I kind of mix and matched a few of the prompts together but I hope you enjoy ♡

“No bird nested in the _nemeton_, nor did any animal lurk nearby; the leaves constantly shivered though no breeze stirred. Altars stood in its midst, and the images of the gods. Every tree was stained with sacrificial blood. the very earth groaned, dead yews revived; unconsumed trees were surrounded with flame, and huge serpents twined round the oaks. The people feared to approach the grove, and even the priest would not walk there at midday or midnight lest he should then meet its divine guardian.” 

― Lucan, _Pharsalia_

* * *

Jesse hates forests. Hates this one in particular. Hates the darkness overhead; the way fog clings to the heavy branches of the trees, sinks into his skin, leaving him chilled to the bone no matter how many layers he wears. The canopy of thick branches blocks out all light from the heavens and even his lantern isn’t doing much in this mist. He was born to the desert: to the vast wilderness of earth and sky that fosters so much life, despite appearing lifeless and still. Feels most at home when he can see the moon hanging up there, count the stars and name the constellations. It’s what he used to do as a kid, bored and alone, sitting out on the front porch trying to ignore the sounds of yelling and furniture being smashed inside.

The forest, by contrast, seems as though it should be teeming with wildlife. But it’s always too silent here. Silent and dark.

He grits his teeth and pulls his coat closer around himself to keep out the chill. It’s a useless effort.

Before, he never used to run this route alone. Doing this one alone was akin to a suicide mission, and everyone knew it.

Now he’s the only one left, and he has no choice.

* * *

From the shadows behind a yew tree, it watches.

* * *

Jesse continues walking, boots sinking into the muddy litterfall. He sighs, pulling his foot free with a wet squelch. What he’d give for sand right now. Sand and clean, firm rock.

Lost in thought, he doesn’t notice the concealed root underneath. He trips and pitches forward, one hand shooting out to steady himself against the bark of a nearby tree, the other firmly gripped around his knife handle. _ Never let go of your knife_, that was one of the first things Gabe had taught him. You let both hands wander from your weapons, and you were dead.

Jesse grabs at the wet, rough bark, grimacing as his fingertips brush past something vaguely slimy coating the surface. God, he hates forests.

“Fuckin’ gross,” he mutters, wiping away the muck-something on his thigh. From somewhere nearby, he hears a noise that vaguely sounds like a laugh. 

He removes his knife from its sheath and cocks his revolver in one fluid motion, spinning the knife around so the blade points outwards. He takes in a slow, silent breath, eyes rapidly scanning the darkness. Plenty of small harmless creatures inhabit the ancient woodlands that like to play pranks or have a laugh at a poor witless traveller’s expense. They’re the ones Jesse isn’t afraid of. Annoying, but ultimately benign.

But there are other things in the dark, and masquerading as a more harmless creature in order to trick a passer-by is definitely a tactic Jesse’s on the receiving end of before.

He grits his teeth at the memory, and carefully flicks the safety off. Twelve counts later, he lets his arms relax.

“Rookie mistake, cowboy,” says a quiet voice behind him.

Jesse twirls around instantly, ring finger on the trigger. That _ voice_. It almost sounded like—but no, he’d been dead and gone for years.

He remembers seeing the report land on his desk, a thump of paper and binding that heralded his promotion to Hunter Captain… and with it the news of Gabe’s death.

_ Body not recovered_, it had read, in Morrison’s neat, blocky writing. _ No possibilities yet ruled out. Gabriel Reyes marked as MIA until further notice. _

And then underneath, in smaller writing, like he was ashamed: _ I’m sorry, Jesse. _

But over the years, as Jesse’s office door remained closed, even after the rest of the old guard fell to beasts and creatures of the night—Ana first, and then Jack, and with him the dissolution of the regiment—Gabe never made a return appearance. At the beginning, Jesse had held out hope that he would come striding in through that doorway, making some snide comment about Jesse sitting at _ his _ desk, sitting in _ his _ chair, drinking _ his _ whisky from the liquor cabinet. He’d have laughed, grabbed Jesse by the scruff of his neck, and thrown him out with a “see you tomorrow, McCree.”

But Gabriel never came back, and eventually Jesse pulled down the dusty file from the bookshelf where it stood next to all the rest, picked up his inkwell and pen, and scrawled KIA over Gabriel’s name, covering up the MIA left there years earlier.

“Who’s there?” Jesse calls, rattled. The something out there laughs in response. It’s Gabe’s laugh.

“Don’t play with me!” Jesse hisses. If something has taken Gabe’s likeness, or—God forbid—his corpse, and had it all this time…

He begins pacing around between the trees, one hand firmly gripped on his revolver, the other on his hunting knife.

_McCree…_ the voice says, as soft as a whisper on silk. Jesse scans the treeline, eyes wide, trying to figure out what kind of spirit he could be dealing with. The familiar mantras run through his head: _ One, figure out exactly what it is you’re dealing with. never try and take down a beast or wraith without first understanding exactly what it is. _

Suddenly—_there_, standing between two trees is a dark humanoid figure. Jesse pulls his knife out, flips it in his hand, and throws it at the spectre. The knife goes right through and lands with a solid _ thunk _ in a tree behind it.

_ Two_, his brain supplies, _ if you realize you are unprepared, come back and tackle the creature later. you always have time, but only one life. In most cases. _

Must be some kind of wraith, Jesse thinks. One who knows who he is and is deliberately using Gabe’s memory and voice to rile him up. Either that, or it is unaware of who he is and is just using the last human corpse it desecrated to project a humanoid persona. Whichever it is, Jesse doesn’t like it one bit. If the first, it’s intelligent and capable of recognizing who Jesse is, and knows the nature of Gabe and Jesse’s previous relationship. If the second, this thing has had Gabe’s corpse for God knows how long and has violated it in innumerable ways.

Jesse grits his teeth and begins to back away slowly. As much as he hates leaving it out there, he didn’t come equipped this evening to fight a spectre. They require special bullets, lots of lanterns, and usually a few charms for good measure. He’ll back away, equip himself, and come back another night when he’s ready.

He watches the darkness fold in on itself, twisting and shifting the way the forests always do, playing the shadow tricks on his mind and his eyes.

One step back, and then another. Careful.

His back hits something solid and at first Jesse assumes he’s backed into a tree. He shifts slightly, trying to slide around the trunk.

A pair of very warm, very thick and furred arms keeps him in place. The creature, who had been playing him for a fool all this time, growls low in its throat, and Jesse can feel the vibrations of it all down his back, where he’s pressed into the creature’s chest.

Jesse feels all the hairs on the back of his neck stand up, and closes his eyes.

_ Three: don’t turn your back to it, unless you want an early death. _

He tries to lift his revolver and turn around, but one paw, huge and possessing wickedly sharp claws, grabs his wrist hard enough to break. Jesse hisses, struggles weakly in its grip, but his arms have him boxed in, and the creature’s other paw comes up around his neck, holding him firmly in place. Jesse can feel the circulation in his hand begin to weaken, as the pressure on his neck and wrist tighten, and his revolver drops heavily to the ground as his eyes flutter close and he silently apologizes to all the ghosts of previous Hunters for being so goddamn _ stupid_.

* * *

He has no idea what time it is when he awakens. His head is throbbing, and he knows he’s dehydrated. Pushing himself up to his hands and knees groggily, Jesse becomes vaguely aware of the fact that he’s somewhere warm, dimly lit, and he can smell blood nearby.

Pushing himself to his feet, he realizes his coat is nowhere to be found. Thankfully, he’s still wearing everything else; shirt and boots and trousers and gloves, of which he’s extremely grateful for. He appears to be in some kind of cave; there are a couple of lanterns strewn about on the floor sending dancing shadows flickering across the uneven texture of the rocky walls. Jesse studies them for a moment, willing his brain to stop banging against his skull, and reaches out to grasp at an outwardly jutting piece of cave wall to steady himself. He begins moving slowly, hoping he can find his coat and be out of here before the creature returns from wherever it’s gone. He doesn’t know for what purpose it wants him for, but since it didn’t just kill him outright, it clearly wants him alive for something.

Jesse doesn’t want to give it that chance. His wrist is aching, and he shuffles across the cave with the rock wall as leverage. There’s a heady, cloying scent of blood in his nostrils, but nothing on him seems to be bleeding, and Jesse guesses it’s coming from somewhere in the cave itself.

Whatever it is, it’s strong. So strong it’s making him nauseous; the sickly sweet metallic scent of fresh blood that reminds him of the time he lost the arm, ripped off by a shrieking griffon that had nearly had all of him. He’d lain there in the nest, surrounded by feathers and bones, shivering and crying. A seventeen year old apprentice, young and dumb and bleeding out from his severed arm, about to die because of a stupid mistake.

Then Gabe had appeared, shotguns at the ready, and filled the monster with enough buckshot to fell an elephant.

Jesse pushes the memory away from his mind and continues moving. He’s nearly reached what he assumes is a sort of storage place for the creature, because he can see the faint outlines of crates and jars. His coat might be in that pile somewhere. He has no weapons on him, but in one of the inner concealed pockets is a length of wire garrote, and it’s better than wandering around the forest at night with nothing but his fists.

He drops to his knees and begins moving around half blindly in the pile of goods. A couple of large blankets, a few large jars of what appears to be honey or perhaps wine; Jesse moves them aside. He spots a dark mass inside one wooden crate and eagerly reaches inside, only for his hands to brush against smooth, dark metal.

He stops. Weapons? A gun maybe? Gingerly, he runs his hands down what he assumes is the barrel. Yes, definitely a gun. In fact—a shotgun, no,_ two _ shotguns, broad and heavy and beautifully engraved, if his clammy cold fingertips are anything to go by.

Jesse pulls one out carefully and peers at it in the half-light. And nearly drops it in shock.

These guns… he _knows_ these guns.

They were Gabriel’s.

His heart drops to his chest, and he knows what had happened all those years ago. It must have been this creature, this creature killed Gabriel, and took his guns and equipment and desecrated his corpse, trapping his spirit so that it could use it to manipulate poor unwitting travellers.

God, he’s so _ furious _ he could scream. He rises to his feet, clutching one of the guns, turns around—

And the beast is standing right there behind him. Jesse didn’t even hear him approach, he was so angry, so caught up in his own mind. Furious about Gabriel.

Quick as lightning, the creature sees the shotgun in McCree’s hand and snarls, lips pulling back to reveal razor sharp, ivory white teeth. It grabs the shotgun, rips it from Jesse’s hands and clocks him over the head with the barrel, sending Jesse crumpling to the cold stone with a cry.

It places the shotgun down on a nearby crate almost reverently, and Jesse just has enough time to think of how strange that is before he’s grabbed by his shirt collar and lifted clean off his feet. The beast is tall, he thinks dizzyingly. Over two metres at least, with thick black fur all over its body. It pulls him in close, panting, and Jesse can feel and smell the hot, damp breath of it overpowering his senses. He wrinkles his nose at the smell of blood and meat emanating from it, and the creature pulls back its arm and throws him across the cave onto the ground. Jesse lands painfully, head knocking against the stone, twisting his shoulder as he scrambles to his feet and tries desperately to get into a fighting position. The creature makes a strange huffing noise that could almost be taken as a laugh, and Jesse spits onto the ground.

“Come on, you piece of shit,” he says. “I’m here for revenge.”

The creature huffs again, and stands up to its full height, hackles raised. Jesse dives in for a punch but its grabbed easily in the beast’s huge paw, calloused and rough. It twists his arm with a sickening crack, and Jesse gasps in pain as he’s pushed to the ground. He struggles, but the creature grabs the back of his neck and forces him onto his hands and knees.

“What the fuck do you want?” Jesse hisses, “get off me and play fair, you—”

He feels the back of his trousers tear, and freezes in fear. _ No_. _ Not this. Please no. _The fabric rips easily, and Jesse can feel the air on his backside, flinches as the creature’s hot, damp breath ghosts across his ass. He struggles, but both wrists are caught in the creature’s paws, and it holds him firmly in place as it begins to sniff between his cheeks, nose twitching at Jesse’s scent.

“Stop…” he tries again, but deep down he knows what’s coming. Better to just… endure. Endure and hope there’s enough of him left by the end to escape.

He cries out at the feeling of a hot, wet tongue licking up between his cheeks, around his hole, licking him open and getting him ready. It’s hot, and wet and filthy, and Jesse’s never felt so exposed. It continues licking, apparently unaware of Jesse’s soft whimpers and the tears beginning to fall down his face.

He screams as the creature bites his ass hard enough to draw blood, and feels the slow trickle of it run down his skin as the creature growls low in his throat, apparently pleased at the sight and taste. It presses itself against Jesse’s ass, and Jesse can feel its length, hot and hard and free from its sheath right up against his hole. It pauses for a moment, savouring the sensation, before pushing itself inside. 

A scream bubbles up in Jesse’s throat and he cries out, broken and guttural as the creature forces its cock inside and begins a brutal pace, thrusting in and out. Something tears, and Jesse can feel the tackiness of his own blood easing the way. He grits his teeth, and forces himself to stop whimpering, even as the pain builds. He will get out of this. He will escape, and he’ll come back and fill this thing full of silver.

It feels like an eternity later when the creature begins growling again, and Jesse feels the swelling of its knot growing. He closes his eyes against the tears and holds his jaw steady, waiting for it.

When the creature finally comes inside him, hot and sticky, all Jesse feels is relief that it’s mostly over. The knot pushes against the rim of his hole, keeping him open, and the stabbing pain he felt earlier has mostly died down to an aching throb. Nothing to do but wait for it to finish filling him with its cum, and then he can deal with it all later. Later.

The creature begins snuffling around Jesse’s neck, and he flinches despite himself. Strangely, the creature seems put off by that, and stops. When its knot shrinks, it pulls itself free with a gush of wet stickiness that makes Jesse feel a hot rush of shame, and then the creature picks itself up and leaves him there on the ground, shivering with humiliation and anger.

_ Get up,_ Jesse’s brain tells him. _ Get up and go now while you still have the chance. _

But his body is weak and tired, and Jesse merely closes his eyes and lets himself drift.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading!


End file.
